April 23, 2025 Ukraine and the World – Against russia’s Aggression. Sanctions in Action

Ukraine has received another package of equipment from the IT Coalition funded by Luxembourg and Iceland, with a total value of almost EUR 2 million, which included 3,288 access points of various models, 500 routers, 460 charging stations with solar panels, and 872 phones.

Prime Minister of New Zealand Christopher Laxon has said his country continues to provide military aid in support of Ukraine’s self-defense. According to him, the aid will include providing intelligence, logistical support, training for soldiers, assistance to the wounded in combat, training in the disposal of explosive ordnance at sea, etc.

The Japanese company DENZAI has said it is ready to provide heavy-lifting and large-scale equipment for the needs of restoring Ukraine.

Spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland Paweł Wroński has stressed that Ukraine knows putin and the price of his ceasefire declarations.

European Commission’s Spokesperson Guillaume Mercier has said that the process of screening – checking the compliance of Ukrainian legislation with EU law – within the framework of accession negotiations with Ukraine is proceeding at an unprecedented speed for the European Union.

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Switzerland, following the European Union, has added to the sanctions list eight russian propaganda media – the Internet edition lenta.ru, the TV channel “zvezda” and the newspaper “krasnaya zvezda”, the information site eurasia daily, the news front agency, the southfront website, the portal rubaltic.ru and “fond strategicheskoy kultury”.

Minister of Foreign Affairs of France Jean-Noel Barrot has said that the “Easter truce” announced by putin was a marketing operation to gain the trust of US President Donald Trump.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Lithuania intends to modernize its surveillance systems at four checkpoints on the border with pussia. The cost of the project is EUR 16 million.

In 2024, countries of the European Union issued 7,500 orders to citizens of the rf demanding to leave their territory. This number was a record for the last four years. The figure grew by 1.76 % compared to 2023, when 7,370 russians received orders.

Amid claims of import substitution, machine tool production has more than doubled in russia, but companies’ dependence on foreign equipment still remains almost absolute. In 2024, russian companies purchased 693 thousand machine tools, which is almost by a third fewer than the peak of 1 million in 2023. At this, 98.3 % of the purchased equipment was foreign-made. At the same time, the rf’s own production of machine tools more than doubled in five years (from 2020 to 2024), from 5,300 to 11,360 units. In 2024, 71 % of all imported machine tools came to russia from China. In monetary terms, the deliveries amounted to $1.61 billion.

The inflation rate for low-income citizens in russia is 1.7 times higher than the official figure from the authorities. Thus, in March, the overall rate of price growth exceeded 10 % in annual terms, while “inflation for the poor”, calculated by the consumption basket, amounted to 17 %.

“pochta rossii” (“russia’s post” – Transl.) has switched to manual sorting of letters and began to delay the delivery of correspondence for a month or more, even within the same region. This is due to Western sanctions, under which some of the foreign equipment stopped working.

The abolition of massive preferential mortgages and the increase in interest rates to almost 30 % have caused a decline in demand and decrease in prices for flats in new buildings in moscow. In January-March of this year, the average cost of a square meter of housing in new buildings decreased by 5 % compared to the last three months of 2024, to RUB 395,800.

Despite the record decline in oil revenues and the growing budget deficit, in 2025, the kremlin has doubled (to 1 billion rubles) the spending on the russian youth movement “yunarmiya”, which is engaged in ideological indoctrination and military training of teenagers.

In the rf, the number of people convicted under the article on battery committed by those who had previously received an administrative penalty for a similar crime increased by 11.5 %.

Since 2017, when russian authorities recognized Jehovah’s Witnesses as an extremist organization, 904 russians have been prosecuted for their religious beliefs.

A new wave of travel cancellations to Anapa has been recorded after rospotrebnadzor banned the opening of the swimming season there due to a fuel oil spill. In less than a week, 10 % of bookings were canceled. At this, many russians canceled their tours at the beginning of the year, almost immediately after the December 15 tanker disaster, which led to an environmental catastrophe in the region. By the end of the upcoming season, the polluted Black Sea coast of Krasnodar Krai may lose more than half of its tourists. According to official figures, 5.5 million people vacationed in Anapa in 2024.

Polish border guards stopped 250 attempts by migrants to cross the border with belarus in four days.

In March, annual inflation in belarus accelerated to 5.9 %. A month earlier, it was 5.6 %. At this, prices for dairy products broke a ten-year record by more than 40 %.

Over the past five years, newspaper circulation in the rb has decreased by almost 40 %.